“Are you sure?” I ask.
Fredrik turns his blinker on and we turn left at the next street. He maintains the speed limit and doesn’t appear to let those in the vehicle know that he’s on to them. I just hope he’s wrong.
“They’ve been following us since we pulled out of the studio,” he says and my heart sinks. “They were watching us, parked in the lot across the street.”
“So, they’re why you decided to get breakfast,” I assume.
Fredrik nods and turns right at the next stop light.
I’m kicking myself, feeling so goddamned small and inexperienced that I wasn’t smart enough to notice these things. I wasn’t observant enough of my surroundings to know that we were being watched the whole time. But this isn’t the time or place to be frustrated with myself. I just hope there’s time for that later.
“What are we going to do?” I ask nervously.
Fredrik presses on the gas pedal and suddenly we’re doing fifty in a thirty-five, and heading straight for the on-ramp to the freeway. The Navigator is close behind, staying on our tail. I grab my seatbelt strap and pull it tighter and then I grip onto the seats again.
“We’re going to lose them,” Fredrik answers as we go from fifty to seventy in a couple short seconds as we get onto the freeway.
I’m holding on for dear life, my heart in my throat, as the car weaves recklessly in and out of traffic, cutting people off and even going around vehicles by way of the shoulder. But the Navigator stays right on us, weaving its way through the same path that we take. Horns honk noisily, angrily at us as we speed by.
“HOLD ON!” Fredrik shouts.
In that second, my shoulder is crushed against the side window as Fredrik makes a sharp turn from the center lane into the right, just mere inches from the front bumper of a little white car. I hear the squealing of the tires, ours and the white car’s, and then I’m shoved to the other side of my seat when he abruptly steadies the vehicle.
I turn awkwardly at the waist in the front seat, the seatbelt still wrapped around my body, holding me in place, to see the Navigator coming at us from behind a blue car. The car swerves left, trying to get out of the way and clips the front of the white car we just passed. Both cars spin violently in the middle of the freeway, the white one squealing to a stop in the far left lane, narrowly missing the concrete wall barrier separating this freeway from the other side. Smoke billows from underneath the tires. The blue car rolls over onto its side, crashing. I gasp, my hand comes up over my mouth.
The freeway from the wreck backward comes to a halt, everyone except for us and the Navigator following closely behind. Out ahead, people aware of what’s going on, already parting the way for us. We rocket past at ninety miles per hour, forcing a line of cars to pull over on the side of the freeway.
The farther we get from the wreck, the more numerous the cars ahead of us thicken and we’re right back in the same situation as moments ago, weaving in and out, horns honking, my body hitting the door and the window with every other sharp turn.
Fredrik moves quickly over into the far left lane, the fast lane.
“We need to get off the freeway!”
“We have to lose them first!”
“How the hell are we going to do that?” I look back again. They are still behind us, their front bumper just feet from ours.
Fredrik doesn’t answer. He’s watching everything, keeping his eyes on the road in front, the vehicles on all sides of us, the Navigator in the back. After a few moments of this, I’m beginning to feel like he’s putting together a plan in his head.
Suddenly, at the very last second, Fredrik races from the fast lane, across three lanes of traffic, and hits the exit at ninety, mere inches from the concrete wall and orange barrels separating the exit from the freeway. There wasn’t enough time for the Navigator to figure out what Fredrik was doing and to make the exit with us. My head hits the side window. There’s a stop light at the end of the road, but Fredrik is going too fast to stop and he zips right through it. Thankfully it appears to be a less-traveled road and no vehicles are there to meet us.
“What the hell was that?!” I scream at him from the side, my hand pressed against my chest, trying to steady my heartbeat.
He doesn’t answer until we’re far away from the exit and driving down a series of streets. Both of us keep looking around in all directions searching for the Navigator.
“If I had stayed in the right lane,” he says, “he would’ve expected me to get off at any exit.”
As much as it scared the shit out of me, I can’t deny that his crazy plan worked.
“You could’ve killed us!”
“You act like that’s something new to you,” he says.
I laugh out loud.
Fredrik gets back on the freeway going in the opposite direction, back toward the Krav Maga studio. But before we get anywhere near the studio, he turns down an unfamiliar street and bypasses it altogether.
“Where are we going?”
“Back to Albuquerque,” he answers. “The long way around. Just in case.”
Six hours of vigilantly watching through the windows of the house and Victor finally pulls into the driveway. Fredrik and I are both on our feet the second we hear the tiny rocks popping and grinding underneath the tires.
Victor drops his keys on the kitchen counter first and comes into the living room, setting his briefcase on the coffee table.
“Any sign of them?” he asks Fredrik right then.
He looks at me now and I can’t read his expression, which, I have learned, is usually because he’s got too much on his mind and he’s trying to stay focused.
Before Fredrik has a chance to answer, Victor asks me, “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m not hurt.” I look off toward the wall when I hear Fredrik speak up.
“I wasn’t followed here,” Fredrik says. “I made sure of that. Went an hour out of the way just to be sure. And there has been no sign of anyone here, just a few vehicles on the highway, but nothing suspicious.”
Victor comes around the coffee table and sits on it, the same way that I often do, and he looks down into my eyes as I sit on the center cushion looking back at him. He appears concerned. And angry. Not at me, though, but I think at whoever was in that Navigator.
“Before you say anything—”
“Like I told Fredrik,” he cuts in calmly, dropping his hands between his thighs, his elbows resting on the tops of his legs, “I didn’t expect you to stay here, cooped up in this house the whole time I was gone. Don’t apologize for leaving.”
Surprised by his tolerance, I’m rendered quiet for a moment.
“I wouldn’t have gone anywhere else,” I finally say, still feeling like I screwed up again. “I figured since I’ve been staying here all this time and training with Spencer, that it wouldn’t make any difference whether I chose to go today or to wait until you got back.”
“And you’re right,” Victor says. He reaches out and places his hands on my knees. “This isn’t about you leaving.” He looks over at Fredrik as Fredrik takes the empty seat. “We have to figure out how they knew where to find you.”
I see something in Victor’s face that Fredrik can’t see, something that puts me on edge. Victor has the look of a man who is suspicious of someone, who is suspicious of Fredrik. I look back and forth between the two of them, trying to understand Victor’s mindset. Is this Samantha back in Texas all over again? Did Victor put too much of what little trust he possesses in the wrong person again? Was this the test all along, by leaving Fredrik with me, alone?